{"id":580795,"date":"2025-11-19T16:56:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/580795\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:56:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:56:17","slug":"boks-poor-mans-henry-pollock-shares-why-he-hated-rassie-erasmus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/580795\/","title":{"rendered":"Boks’ ‘poor man’s Henry Pollock’ shares why he ‘hated’ Rassie Erasmus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa<\/a> head coach Rassie Erasmus\u2019 once strained relationship with former team-mate Bobby Skinstad has been \u201crepaired\u201d, according to Skinstad.<\/p>\n

The two South Africa captains\u2019 careers overlapped, which saw them competed for a place in the Springboks back-row for four years, having made their Test debuts months apart in 1997.<\/p>\n

Joining the Stick to Rugby<\/a> podcast recently, the 2007 World Cup winner Skinstad, who jokingly referred to himself as \u201cthe poor man\u2019s Henry Pollock\u201d, explained how the pair \u201chated each other\u201d during their playing days, but have worked together since retiring and \u201crepaired\u201d their relationship.<\/p>\n

While Erasmus moved into coaching once he had hung up his boots, Skinstad moved into punditry and commentary. It was in that role that he helped provide Erasmus with footage and stats, where he experienced first-hand how the Springboks boss \u201cwas different to everybody else\u201d.<\/p>\n

Skinstad went on to describe his former team-mate as an \u201cinnovator\u201d, describing his work as \u201cincredible\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ireland <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

South Africa <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cHe definitely thinks out of the box,\u201d the 42-cap Springbok said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a creative player. We hated each other because he competed for the same position. I became a commentator, and he started doing a lot of data analytics and stats and he was asking SuperSport stuff. We gathered all these stats and I phoned him up, I was like \u2018Rassie, what are you looking for?\u2019 And we actually started doing similar appraisal work of what he was doing, and then I realised how much he was doing that was different to everybody else and he\u2019s just carried on. He\u2019s just gone on leaps and bounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t got on with him. South Africa were playing a kicking game, we were castigated because we were kicking the ball away all the time. But it was proven that if you play less time with ball in hand than the opposition, and they are running at you, you will win more often. He picked that up, so he was like \u2018how do I get that across?\u2019 So he asked us for all the stats and the footage and I asked him why, and the relationship repaired because we weren\u2019t competing for the same jersey anymore. I got to get a very close look and appraisal of how he was doing it, even at a provincial level, which is incredible.<\/p>\n

\u201cInnovators have to do things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus\u2019 once strained relationship with former team-mate Bobby Skinstad has been \u201crepaired\u201d, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-580795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115577422047911482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}